How Chemistry Works: Gorgeous Vintage Science Diagrams, 1854

Illustrated retro reactions from the father of Popular Science.

Edward Livingston Youmans (1821-1887), best-remembered as the founder of Popular Science magazine, was one of history’s greatest science writers and editors. Besides pioneering what Richard Feynman has termed “the role of scientific culture in modern society” with his journalistic endeavors, Youmans also authored a number of beautifully illustrated textbooks, including Chemical Atlas: Or, The Chemistry of Familiar Objects. Originally published in 1854, the book is in the public domain but is sadly long out of print. A digital version is available in multiple formats from The Internet Archive, and it has been reproduced in hard-copy, alas without the artwork. Many of the individual illustrations are available as prints. (Click each image for the poster version.)

Youmans writes in the introduction:

Every experienced teacher understands the necessity of making the acquisition of the elementary and foundation principles upon which a science rests, the first business of study. If these are thoroughly mastered, subsequent progress is easy and certain.

Complement with some gorgeous vintage science ads, anatomical illustrations, and science infographics.

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Britain vs. America in Minimalist Vintage Infographics

A time-capsule of mid-century cultural contrasts.

ISOTYPE, the vintage visual language pioneered by Austrian sociologist, philosopher and curator Otto Neurath and his wife Marie in the 1930s, shaped modern information graphics and visual storytelling. America and Britain: Three Volumes in One, also known as Only an Ocean Between, is a wonderful 1946 out-of-print book by P. Sargant Florence and Lella Secor Florence from the golden age of ISOTYPE, kindly digitized by Michael Stoll, presenting a series of minimalist infographics that compare and contrast various aspects of life in Britain and the United States, a-la Paris vs. New York.

As a time-capsule of cultural change and technological progress, the infographics put present-day numbers in perspective, especially in the domains of telecommunication, media, and resource usage.

Though this particular triad edition is regrettably long out of print, you can find it at your local public library and, with some rummaging through Amazon, you might be able to secure some remaining used copies of the individual volumes.

For more on the history and legacy of ISOTYPE, see the excellent The Transformer: Principles of Making Isotype Charts.

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Animated Infographic: Unspilling the Gulf Oil

This week marks the one-year anniversary of the Gulf Oil Spill, one of the largest environmental disasters in history. On Monday, we revisited photographer Edward Burtynsky’s gripping Oil series as a visceral reminder of just how dependent we are on this highly politicized resource. Today, Brooklyn-based animator Chris Harmon approaches the same subject from an entirely different angle: A numbers-driven infographic animation illustrating the exact scale of the spill by exploring what could’ve been done with the 205,000,000 (that’s million) gallons that poured into the Gulf.

The 205 million gallons of oil lost in the Gulf is the same amount the United States consumes in less than 7 hours.”

For a more serious and in-depth look at the oil economy, you won’t go wrong with Pulitzer Prize winner Daniel Yergin’s The Prize: The Epic Quest for Oil, Money & Power.

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